Hey everyone! Elton and I are back with another video where we tasted some new flavors of soy milk we found here in Japan. This time we try: Vanilla Ice Cream, Earl Grey, Pudding, Black Sesame, and Ginger!

Japan has an amazing variety of soy milks. In America, it’s easy to find chocolate, vanilla, and plain soy milk. Here in Japan, there are fruit flavors coffee and tea flavors along with many others. For this blog post, I will review some of the fruit flavors you can find at grocery stores in Japan.

You can find these small soy milk boxes at convenience stores like 7/11, Family Mart, and Lawson. You can also find them at grocery stores as well. They sell for about 80¥-100¥/box (about 0.80-$1.00). There is around a cup of soy milk in each. You can find larger containers at grocery stores but you probably won’t be able to find these flavors. They tend to only sell certain flavors in larger containers (coffee, earl grey tea, fruit, and more can be found in larger containers). The larger containers sell for about 150¥ to 225¥ and has the same quantity of soy milk you can find in American containers.

My favorite of these four was definitely the melon. It tasted like cantaloupe and wasn’t extremely sweet like you might think a fruit flavored soy milk would be. My second favorite was the yuzu. It wasn’t a flavor I was very familiar with but it wasn’t very sweet and tasked great. The mango was a little sweet for me but tasted similar to a mango lassi. The strawberry was probably my least favorite. I thought I would like strawberry a lot but the flavor tasted imitation and wasn’t very sweet. I think the mango and the strawberry tasked more like juice mixed with soy milk, whereas the melon and yuzu retained their soy milk texture and taste.

I’ve also had the fruit soy milk, which was very sweet for me. I mixed it with unsweetened soy milk and it made the taste much more bearable.

Although I haven’t been very happy with Starbucks lately for at least two reasons, there has been a lot of traffic to my blog searching for vegan items at Starbucks. I’ve done some research in order to provide my readers with information on what is and what isn’t vegan at Starbucks. Let me know in the comments section if you have corrections or additions to what is posted here!

I am a big Starbucks fan. I always go to Starbucks to study or get other work completed. Being outside of my home helps me get more work finished faster and I always chose Starbucks for doing this. I became hooked on Starbucks when I became vegan and could get many of their espresso or coffee drinks made with soy milk. My love with Starbucks became even more obsessed when they started their rewards card program back in 2007 or 2008 and included free wifi and soy milk for rewards members. Soy milk is normally an extra $0.40-$0.60 depending on the store. Sometimes baristas would charge me for the few teaspoons of soy milk I would ask for in my coffee. That wasn’t an issue anymore because it was free, and has been free for the past 5 years. On October 16th, 2012 that will all change when Starbucks makes their rewards program “better” and takes away free soy milk. This isn’t my first rant about Starbucks lately.

What does this mean? Starbucks says that they will be giving other rewards that are better and make up for this but, if you do the math, soy drinkers will spend much more than they were spent before the change. And so, my love with Starbucks has ended. I am spending the last few dollars on my account and have stopped automatically loading my card with cash. Without offering this loyalty reward, I can just go to the Saxby’s who is much closer or other local cafes that are less busy and have soy milk as well. There has been a backlash over the change from soy drinkers on their Facebook page and on Twitter. Currently bringing free soy back is the top idea in many of the categories on the My Starbucks Idea website.

If you’re upset about the change I would suggest sending Starbucks an email, connecting with them on Facebook, or posting on their Idea website.

Here’s a list of some of the changes coming to the Starbucks rewards program: